Author
Topic: The Golden Compass (Read 5949 times)

Anyone else seen these in stores yet? I've seen them at two different TRU stores in my area, and bought each figure.

These figures are extremely detailed, and are just a bit larger scaled than Star Wars... rather than 3-3/4", I'd say they're based on 4" scale. So it's pretty close. They don't have great articulation, and kind of remind me of McFarlane stuff. Still, very cool and most of the characters come with an animal too, called a daemon. I'm not sure what a daemon is, but there is a wolf, a cat, a rabbit, a warthog, a crow, etc. Very detailed animals - better than Schleich I think. These are priced at $5.99 each.

Most I'm going to use for customs, but I'll try and post a couple pics of some of the figures that I haven't taken apart yet. But for reference to see how nice the head sculpts are, here's a figure's head that I put onto a Padme figure -

4" is about the scale XD stuff is... It's true 1:18. Star Wars varies from 4" to 3.75" and sometimes larger/smaller. It's all over the place.

I've not seen these yet, but figured they'd be showing. Some good bases for customizing but the film has no appeal to me really so I'm looking forward to them for parts. Look superior in detail to zizzle's POTC figures, but below SW figures in terms of detail... A nice fit for random parts though, is about all I look for... Anything better than GI Joe, etc.

A daemon is the equivalent of the human soul in the Golden Compass world. Each person has an animal daemon, children's daemons can change animals (from cat to dog to bird to snake etc) By the time they hit puberty a person's daemon will remained fixed in one form. Why this happens is part of the books...which I highly highly recommend people read. It ranks right up there in stuff I've read in the last 10 years.

Being my usual negative self, I really only see these things eating up space in stores as the next movie toy. The movie will hopefully be great (I'm looking forward to seeing it) and from what Scott's said, the books are indeed great. But a good movie and/or a good book these days doesn't mean a toy line that will sell well.

So I'm guessing when these show, if they've been picked up by the TRUs and WMs of the world, they'll eat shelf space and generally clog up the whole process leaving the retailer thinking great, another POTC/Hulk/FF/Superman. Sigh.

The TRU stores in my area have already sold out of all the figures. They have a lot of the ships left however.

Also, there was a sneak preview of the movie Saturday night in St. Louis. My wife and I got to see it - and I have to say, I was amazed by this movie. I didn't realize that it's apparently a trilogy. Wow. Talk about a very unique storyline, and the whole daemon concept is genius.

The TRU stores in my area have already sold out of all the figures. They have a lot of the ships left however.

Also, there was a sneak preview of the movie Saturday night in St. Louis. My wife and I got to see it - and I have to say, I was amazed by this movie. I didn't realize that it's apparently a trilogy. Wow. Talk about a very unique storyline, and the whole daemon concept is genius.

Glad you liked it CHEWIE, I can't wait to see it, as I said, read the books, even better than the movie (as is almost 100% always the case)

Dare I say that I thought the first movie was better than the first LOTR? I honestly think it was... probably because it was less than two hours long, and nothing was drawn out... it seemed to fly by and I would have been happy to watch it again.

Also Nicole Kidman did great, as did Sam Elliot. and the little girl (Lyra?)... Damn I really liked this film. For me at least, it's only topped by Star Wars and Indy. That's how much I enjoyed this movie... I was expecting it to be overdone in some aspects, but it really wasn't, the whole film was beautifully made. Wow.

I bought a set of these for our Toy Database (here's the image gallery in case anyone wants to take a gander). I have mixed feelings about this line. The figures look truly fantastic. Amazing detail in the wardrobe, though the likenesses are a bit off. Decent for 4" scale I guess. I was really disappointed in the articulation though. The two characters with bows & arrows (Serafina and Tony) have their arms permanently bent in the draw position. The legs on most figures are pretty worthless, as their big coats more or less restrict any movement. I do like the Daemons - they're really nice pack-ins. Overall it's a nice line for display, but there's not a lot to do with them dynamically.